5 weeks and counting

Well I've been here for almost 5 weeks, and have almost 5 weeks before I'll be leaving. I definitely feel like I am in the middle of my time: there has been a lull in my project which I foresee picking up soon, I can get around the city with some ease (at least, I know what to ask to get good directions), and I am getting a little sick of the food but at the same time trying to eat all the good stuff because I know soon enough I won't be able to eat it anymore!

My project, per usual, is not going exactly as planned. It's hard to get people to come to the workshops that I am currently doing because it's the schools' winter vacation, and it's frequently cold and rainy. However I have done two full workshops now (I was planning on doing 3 but will probably do 4 because of low turnout), and the parents who came to them have been very receptive and participated a lot.

I was beginning to worry that I wouldn't have enough data to analyze for my thesis because of the smaller amounts of participants than anticipated, but my advisor assured me that all of my field notes about the workshops will also serve as good data, and once I got to thinking about it, I realized I had heard and documented a lot during the workshops! So that's promising. These next weeks will involve finishing (hopefully) two more workshops and doing focus groups and interviews with the parents who participated, and separately with their kids. I'm excited to interact a little bit more with the youth, because until now most of my work has been directly with the parents. It's also exciting to see how these workshops are working out and the potential for their use in the future. Honestly, it seems like a lot would need to be adapted to use them and attract a larger group of parents, but it's exciting to think of the possibilities.

I am also planning on doing interviews with experts in the fields of adolescent health and youth development. I met with the research team at an organization here which is supported by International Planned Parenthood yesterday and they gave me some great contacts. It was really nice for both Vanessa and I to sit with them, discuss doing research in Paraguay and see some of their publications. They do some really important research on reproductive health here, however a ten year USAID grant that had supported their division and the clinic ended in 2009, and since then it has been a struggle for them to find funding. Our conversation just reminded me how ignored Paraguay is!

In other news, we went out dancing for Vanessa's birthday, which was fun. We danced to reggaeton, a little merengue, cumbia, some Brazilian music and ended the night with some "rock," but I sure missed my bachatica! It's also been incredibly cold here (one night I slept with gloves on), but this weekend cleared up and we went to a cute little town that's on the edge of the lake and sells some nice and some tacky ceramics. It was nice to get out and enjoy the weather and fresh air!

Independence Week

A little delayed, but here's a description of my week of 4th of July:

On a nice, sunny, 80 degree Sunday Vanessa and I headed back to the Banado to help out with the organization’s small festival for their patron saint, San Juan (their fiestas patronales, if you will). The branch of the organization who works with mothers who are going back to school was putting on the festival, which involved selling lots of typical Paraguayan foods (yucca empanadas, a cheesy/yucca floury type thing, arroz con leche, and a couple other fried things) as well as selling kids tickets to play games which might win them a prize, and burning life sized dolls at the end. It was fun to help out at the festival and interact a bit with the mothers and their kids. The week before, the branch of the organization which works with adolescents also held a festival, and we helped out there which was fun; usually at these festivals they make a “disco” for the kids and charge to enter. Watching the little 7th and 8th graders at the disco was hilarious, and reminded us of 6th grade dances where all the boys were on one side, the girls on the other, and a couple daring couples in the middle grinding on each other.
The festival at the mothers’ center was different of course. It was mainly filled with little kids and their mothers hanging out and playing games. Towards the end of the night, as per tradition, the organizers brought out two large stuffed dolls. These dolls were meant to be burned, and are usually representing people that the group isn’t very fond of. Well in this case the two dolls were the new president and a lawyer who was involved in the impeachment trial a couple weeks ago. A few teenagers took care of propping them up together and used some cooking oil to help the fire on them spread. Definitely a thrill watching things burn!

At the end of the night most of the moms and kids went home, but a few mothers and some teenagers stuck around and they tried to open up the disco. Unfortunately, not enough people were interested in dancing to really charge to enter. One of the staff at the organization was trying to get people to dance, and given my time in the DR, I jumped in and danced with a couple little kids. We tried to get other people dance too, but once again I was reminded that we were not in the DR, and we couldn’t get anyone to dance for very long. I enjoyed myself nonetheless.
On Wednesday I celebrated our day of independence by attending an “asado” (basically, a barbeque), for my host sister who was turning 22. Because she had to take a test at her university first, the meat didn’t go onto the grill until 9:00 pm, but I didn’t care; I always love watching people put huge chunks of meat on the grill! As we were waiting we all shared some wine, but in a different way than normally at parties, where everyone has their own glass.
Let me give a little background: in Paraguay it is common to drink “terere” which is a cold version of the tea “mate”. You drink both teas through a straw stuck in a small cup. The leaves are already in the cup, and someone will pour hot or cold water into the cup, drink it up, pour more water in and pass it to the next person to drink. It’s common to share between several people, pouring, drinking, and passing for a while until the water in the thermos is gone. Apparently, the tradition doesn’t stop with tea. I had been warned that in Paraguay wine is often mixed with Coke, but when they began to drink wine I was surprised to see that they drink it in a similar way to mate and terere. My host mom filled up a thermos with wine, coke and ice and would pour some into a huge wine glass, filling it maybe a third of the way. She drank maybe one or two sips, then handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how much I was supposed to drink, but soon saw that basically, we were supposed to drink a bit and pass it to the next person, re filling the glass when necessary. Here’s a picture of my host mom, her sister and I; in the corner you can see the huge thermos (which is filled with wine) and the wine glass.

This continued in several different circles the entire night. I enjoyed this kind of communal drinking, despite the fact that my host mom now has a really awful cold and I’d be surprised if I didn’t get it, considering how many times we passed that glass back and forth!
Dinner, which we had around 10:30, was sausage, pieces of the rib, yucca and a cold rice salad, it was great! We then all slowly started going to bed, since my host sister usually wakes up at 4:00 to go to work and the rest of the family starts rising around 5:00. The following two days made it hard to wake up though because it got colder and started to rain off and on. The Banado has streets made of dirt and stones, so when it rains things get really muddy. On top of the cold, the rain makes it a whole lot less likely that people will leave their houses. This is unfortunate for me since I’m at stage in my project where I’m beginning to teach the workshops I hope to evaluate, but in order to really understand what people think of them, they need to actually attend! Of course, when it’s 55 degrees and raining, I don’t want to go walking around in the streets either. A lot of my week next week will include sitting with my organization’s staff people discussing how we can get parents to come to the workshops, calling them to remind them, and figuring out how to best present the workshops so that the most parents possible are able to attend. This reminds m

An attempt at Tourism

Vanessa and I had been warned before coming that there was not a whole lot to do in Paraguay, that it was really the people that made those who had come enjoy the country. Even though we were prepared for that coming in, by this past weekend after a long week of data collection (if you’re really interested in it, you can see the “boring post” below), we were itching to do something, see SOMETHING cool! I don’t think it helps that every time we get on Facebook one of our peers from school is posting a picture of them in a gorgeous spot, or with a giraffe, or mentioning monkeys in their status updates. Thus far we have seen urban, and urban slums basically. We’ve seen plenty of mice, dogs and cats, but no wild animals.

So Saturday we decided to head to a town that is known for its silver jewelry. We had seen some of the artesanal jewelry in two craft markets in Asunción, and had been told that this town had tons of little jewelry stores lining the streets. A lady at the Instituto Nacional de Salud told us how to get there, telling us it should really only take about 20 minutes. When we got on the bus, we asked the driver to tell us when we were in the center of town. After an hour, and passing through what looked like it might be a downtown, the bus driver looked at us and said, “oh yeah, you passed it”. So we got off, hopped on another bus 10 minutes back to the downtown, and started looking for the jewelry stores. We wandered around a bit through the streets, which were filled with little stores selling everything from baskets to flip-flops to party decorations. We asked around for the jewelry stores, and were directed to another street. The jewelry stores were interspersed with other small stores, had pretty standard chains, trinkets and earrings that you could probably find anywhere. I guess they were real silver, which made them a good deal, but let’s be serious, I couldn’t tell the difference between real and fake silver anyways, so we weren't that impressed with the stores.

After being a bit disappointed, we decided to go to the cementary across the street. Cemetaries are always interesting, and a good fallback if you can’t find anything else interesting to see. We saw some family mausoleums, the little lockers where they store coffins, and plenty of coffins themselves. We felt a little better after that.

That night we decided to go downtown to a famous Paraguayan restaurant and then try to meet up with a Peace Corps Volunteer we had met the week before. The restaurant was nice, decent food and right across from a historic building, however the downtown itself seemed pretty dead. I kept wondering where the music was and why it was so quiet. We headed to an expat bar and did meet a few volunteers, but there was STILL no music, and no dancing to be seen. After our underwhelming day, we decided to call it a night and try again next weekend. On the one hand, I feel better knowing I’m not really missing much; instead I can focus on my work and really understanding the Banado and culture of Paraguay, and enjoy the people, who have been incredibly nice and helpfu. But we’re still going to try and get out and see some things—Lonely Planet promises a few cute towns and nice views around Asuncion. In the meantime, it’s back to the Banado!

Though I said I wasn’t going to compare the DR and Paraguay, I can’t help it so I figure I’ll just embrace it.

Here’s my list thus far:

Things from the DR I wish Paraguay had:
Motoconchos
Rice and beans
Bachata and merengue
No verguenza (embarrassment) about dancing
The tendency to greet everyone as you get on a bus

What Paraguay has that I wish the DR had (in my opinion):
Dulce de leche
Good beef
People saying “Gracias”
No use of the word “Dame” (give me)--Haven't heard it once!
Fewer piropos (catcalls) (I haven’t even received a marriage proposal yet!!)

My real work (warning, this is the "boring" post)

So I guess if I want people to follow what I'm doing here in Paraguay I should actually explain the details of my project; I'm not just following Paraguayan politics and trying to understand the weather here!

As mentioned previously, I am here to pilot a pregnancy prevention program that focuses on the mothers of adolescents, giving them techniques on how to talk to their children and convince them to delay sexual relations, and if they have sex, to use protection. The program itself consists of 3 sessions with mothers, but in order to evaluate whether this program, which has been proven effective in the US, works in Paraguay, I will be doing pre and post tests with both mothers and adolescents, as well as focus groups and interviews with participants and "key informants" who are professionals and experts in the field of adolescent health in in Paraguay.

Whew. So yeah, I began with doing focus groups with adolescent mothers, who gave me some insight into what they thought of parent-teen communication and how parents and schools should teach kids about sexual education. Doing the focus groups was challenging and I learned a lot (that's why I'm doing this, right?). We have been warned consistently that Paraguayans are pretty timid, and indeed trying to get a group of girls who barely knew me to open up about their opinions of communication with parents was not easy. However I did get a lot of interesting information and will be able to use their experiences as some examples for the parents when I work with them.

This week I began doing pre-surveys with parents. If I thought the focus groups were challenging, the surveys were far more challenging. I worked very diligently on formulating the survey so that we were asking the right questions, and spent several hours with a woman at Mil Solidarios going over every single question. I also had my research assistant go over it with me, which I thought would be sufficient to ensure that the survey was ready for the parents who would be attending the workshop. But by the end of the week I still wished I had had more time to work on the surveys, as there were still some questions that were difficult for the mothers to answer.

I was able to survey 35 mothers and some of their sons and daughters this past week. I had originally hoped that most of them could fill the surveys out by themselves, however people in the US are far more used to taking surveys than people are here, so generally we sit with those who are taking the survey and read it question by question, while they fill out their own form. This way they can ask questions and we can further explain if they need help. It's of course more time consuming than I originally thought it would be, but I was happy with my progress!

This week has taught me a lot about data collection, which I guess is one of the "competencies" we're supposed to be learning this summer. But I'm really looking forward to actually beginning to give the workshops and interact in a little bit more relaxed environment with the mothers.